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Join the discussion with government experts and practitioners on 16 November in The Hague.

The Netherlands has been at the forefront of ensuring sustainability of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. A policy review published in 2012 revealed that a significant percentage of Dutch-funded WASH facilities provided poor quality services and weren't sustainable. This spurred the Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) to require all partners to sign a 10 year "sustainability clause". This will likely be extended to 15 years once the forthcoming WASH strategy to provide water and sanitation services to 30 and 50 million people respectively, is approved. Partners now use sustainability checks to monitor their "sustainability clause". In addition, the sustainability of programmes must be assessed in the formulation phase.

In the IRC Event speakers from DGIS, Aguaconsult, WASH Alliance International and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) will reflect with participants on the use of mechanisms to check and monitor sustainability of WASH services, from programme appraisal to actual implementation. The following questions will be addressed:

What types of sustainability checks are needed in the different stages of the programming cycle?

Do sustainability checks actually result in better services?

Do sustainability checks need to be standardised?

The IRC event takes place on 16 November 2016, from 17.00-18.30 in The Hague, The Netherlands.